


Sparks From Steel

by blamography



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Album), My Chemical Romance
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:56:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blamography/pseuds/blamography
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Kobra and Mikey's wires cross and they end up dragging innocents along for the ride.  Too bad they're the same person, no one's innocent, and it's not so much a ride as a deathtrap.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sparks From Steel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Delphinapterus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delphinapterus/gifts).



> Warnings for language & minor violence. Tense shift coincides with POV shift. Tons of fun to write, merry Yuletide to Delphinapterus <3 Quotes form the album used & quotes for linebreaks are from Mastas of Ravenkroft.

She made a hiccupping sort of noise and leaned further into him. “You’re unbelievable. You ruin everything.”

“No I don’t. Not my fault.” Her hair smelled like salt and exhaust and if he wasn’t dead drunk Frank would have pushed her away. As it was the lake glittered rather nicely so it was there he turned his attention; the searchlights glinted off the surface of the water, choppy from the wind burning their skin.

“You got medicine, babe?”

“Left it in the car. Didn’t think…”

Her eyelashes fluttered in a way that would have been appealing if it wasn’t from her being drunk on withdrawal and sun and noise. He felt a little sick.

“ATTENTION. THIS IS THE LAKE WOLFBLOOD S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W UNIT.”

“At least they’re announcing it this time,” he muttered into her skin. “D’you think they’re still here?”

She didn’t answer, just watched the Dracs watching them. Someone moaned something deathlike and Frank tried to fight the nausea churning up his gut but couldn’t be bothered. The taste of vomit lingered in the back of his throat long after he emptied his stomach all over the corpse in front of him.

“REST ASSURED WE ARE AT BETTER LIVING INDUSTRIES ARE DOING OUR BEST TO CAPURE THE PERPETRATORS OF THIS AFTERNOON’S MASSACRE. AS YOU KNOW, BETTER LIVING INDUSTRIES IS DEDICATED TO THE IMPROVEMENT OF EVERY ASPECT OF YOUR LIVES…”

“Maybe we can sit down on the sand.” She had started to slur her consonants, words smudged into each other. Like badly cleaned graffiti on the bus-stop schedules – ‘bl/ind to the truth!,’ ‘art is the weapon,’ ‘burn this place to the ground it’s already gone’—

If they were on the sand when they passed out, they wouldn’t hurt so much in the morning. “Okay. Okay,” he said, grabbing her hand. “Let’s go. Sand looks good.”

A Drac pointed a gun at them as they moved but made no attempt to stop them. Frank stumbled over another body, heard a moan, elbowed past a clump of fucked-up kids injecting Fame straight to the carotid.

“S’warm.”

He nodded, letting himself kneel and stare at the shore. “What’s your name?”

She didn’t answer so he looked back over his shoulder. She had collapsed face-first into the sand, her fingers twitching into the soft sand. Frank looked back at the lake.

“…THIS IS THE LAKE WOLFBLOOD S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W UNIT. PLEASE BE AWARE THAT THE PERPETRATORS OF THIS CRIME ARE STILL ACTIVE AND ARE LIKELY STILL PRESENT AT THE SCENE. WE CANNOT ALLOW YOU LEAVE UNTIL WE ARE CERTAIN THAT YOUR RETURN WILL BE SAFE.”

Oh, he couldn’t wait to get back to the city. Maybe it was sterile and maybe it was quiet but anything was better than the blood and the whimpering and the loudspeakers, the helicopters flitting overhead at intervals he didn’t understand. The dryness of his tongue and the acid in his throat. Frank twined his hair in his fingers and tugged, trying to remember what it felt like to be calm, to be blank, to be free of this panic-terror-sickness – what he wouldn’t give his bottle of medicine in the glove-box of his car –

“EVER SINCE THE GREAT FIRE OF 2019, BETTER LIVING INDUSTRIES HAS DEDICATED ITSELF TO ENSURING THE WELFARE OF THE CITIZENRY. AND WE’RE NOT ABOUT TO STOP NOW. THE WOLFBLOOD S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W UNIT IS EQUIPPED WITH THE MOST ADVANCED WEAPONRY AVAILABLE, SUCH AS THE INDIVIDUAL PERSONAL DEFENSE WEAPON AND, IN OUR PREMIUM LINE, THE DEMON-SHARK DELUXE PERSONAL DEFENSE WEAPON, THE—“

Silence, and then the familiar sound of laser blasts. His stomach clenched but there was nothing to throw up; he gritted his teeth and moaned like the dying did.

“Fuckin’ duck! Duck you fuckin’ idiot, do you wanna get your ass ghosted?” Someone surged into him, shoving his body sideways into the sand – there was the sound of guns again but this time so close the air seemed charged and hot, and so loud his ears rang.

“Kobra, what the fuck are you doing? Get the fuck back here—“

A quick series of shots and Frank rolled his eyes towards the sky; all he could see were Dracs falling. Above him there were streaks of light back and forth, sparks falling from steel.

“Kobra, they don’t get it, get back here – fuck it, cover me, Poison, we got ten ‘til the chopper’s here—“

“—fucking go, get him goddammit Kobra I’m gonna kill you—“

Frank was being dragged, sand trailing through his fingers and into his shoes. The collar of his shirt dug into his skin and it was hard to breathe, his vision shook, and all he could hear was screaming and shouting and moaning and the sizzle of weapons, and above it all the Dracs watched until they fell down, dead or dying or maybe they’d never been alive in the first place.

 _Salutations, from a greater northwest valley and  
Reservations, every person goes to a steakhouse 8 P.M._

“We gotta dump him,” someone said, voice mixing in with the sound of engines. A car? Everything trembled. “We could duck in to Zone 2, there are some high-traffic spots—“

“Who the fuck would pick him up, though, Gee? No fucking Good Samaritans in Battery City ‘cause you gotta notice the fucker first, and then—“

“Mikey, goddammit, we can’t afford the distraction, it was good of you to save him but these fuckers wouldn’t even miss anything if they were dead.”

Frank didn’t open his eyes. He swallowed and he hurt, he hurt so much –

“What, then? Kill him?”

And then Frank opened his eyes. He lunged in no particular direction but all of the sudden was pinned down, his entire chest screaming with pain, wide brown eyes meeting his. The man had a mane of curly, dust-colored hair and an expression of utter calm. It reminded him of the Draculoids.

“Well, it’s all well and good to use code-names when we’re fighting, guys, but now our choices are killing him or keeping him.”

Frank tried to say as many things as was possible. One of them might save him. “Please don’t kill me I’m just an uneducated worker but I’m needed in the machine please, uh, I promise not to tell anyone, I didn’t even hear, please, I’m so thirsty—“

The man at the wheel sighed, staring at the road like nothing had happened. The road continued on for miles and miles and miles, faded out towards the horizon like it actually went somewhere. Like nothing had happened. “Don’t look so smug, Mikey.”

“Like you’d kill him. Like you’d kill an innocent.”

“You’re got a weird definition of innocent. You. Motherfucker, what’s your name?”

“Frank, Frank Iero, sometimes Frankie in databases pre-incident, ID number—“

His attacker pushed against his chest and the words froze in his mouth.

“Alright Frankie, I’m Gee, and let me tell you something. Your world’s fucking over, alright? You’re not going back, because Mikey thinks that you’re cute or something, I don’t know, but you’re not going back. We’re gonna take you to this guy named Dr. D and he’s gonna fix you up alright.”

“I want my medicine,” he whimpered., pawing at his eyes, tearing at his scalp. “I get like this when I don’t get my medicine, please, I need my medicine—“

Mikey turned in his seat to stare straight at Frank, eyes cold. He looked like a statue, smooth skin and cheekbones that cast a shadow like a skeleton’s. “You fucking medicine doesn’t do anything besides make you a fucking sheep and once you’re off them, you’ll be just like us. Ray, keep an eye on him. You remember withdrawal.”

“Couldn’t forget it,” Ray said.

Silence. Something was scratching at his insides, at his skull, at his eyes, and he whined high and wordless.

“Turn on the fucking radio, Gee.”

Frank slides down into a loose heap of unrelated body parts; Ray pulls away and he is so cold. He knows what’s coming next, the shakes, the filling-up of his chest with the screaming feeling. Out in front of them the road goes on forever.

 _You got your rickety bones, I got my rickety hands  
You got your rickety bones, I got my rickety hands_

Kobra Kid – that’s what he calls himself in his head cause Mikey ain’t him out here, no, Mikey is him where there’s baths and there’s air conditioning and there’s brainwashing, mainly – Kobra Kid, he shadowboxes with Show Pony at the entrance to the fall-out shelter. Pony’s still wearing the helmet Dr. D gave him when they last ran for it and it hides his expression just enough Kobra can’t guess if he’s distraught or just riding that high-level anxiety that he’s always got, the anxiety that winds him up like the worst of all them Dustangels.

“Cherri’s gone overdrive,” Pony mumbles like through a mouth full of dirt. “Dr. D’s downstairs listening, he’s live, Zone Four.”

Kobra’s mock punches stutter and Pony mocks an uppercut. “Overdrive? Fuckin’ overdrive? Cherri’s gonna get dusted—“

“He means to,” Pony says, big bulbous helmet-head shifting like a curious dog. “For News-a-Go-Go, told us to save our salt and sound alive and bam! He’s ghostin’ Dracs right and left. They’re moving out, you know, the Dracs. We might get action ourselves. Dr. D’s ready to bolt.” And Pony turns tail and trots downstairs, ass swinging like he’s still in the clubs where a couple carbons buy you a night.

Kobra stairs at the dark, fists floating at his chin. He thinks of hitting the wall, letting the pain drag him back down to the sand, but Poison’s hollering for him, voice tinny like a chopper.

“Help me get your braindead hostage, Mikey,” he says, ‘cause he and Jet Star got the fucker held between them. Kobra shuffles over and hauls the body over his shoulder; Frank’s neck-deep in the worst of withdrawal from whatever shit BL/ind is feeding the masses. He’s gonna wake up terrified and euphoric and they’re gonna build him up, Kobra can see it, maybe Poison doesn’t like it but they need as many bodies as possible throwing themselves at the Dracs, beating them out of the Zones, seeing, actually, what’s fucking going on—

The fallout shelter is cool. “Cherri’s gone overdrive,” he says. Frank twitches in his grip so he tightens his hands around his stomach.

“Overdrive?” Poison asks, except his voice is weak. Trembly-fluttery-dust storm sounding. “Like, dusteating all-for-none?”

“Zone four and seventeen down,” he says. Frank’s back scrapes against the concrete ceiling as Kobra’s head does and he ducks them down. “He’s radioing Dr. D live, if you wanna hear. Dracs driving up closer; Party Pony thinks they might get in our faces tonight.”

Poison moans something and Jet Star, ever silent, brushes his fingers over the batteries in his pockets. Always ready to light up the sky even if he don’t talk about it, Jet Star. Mechanized supernova, gonna ride up into the night and light the world on fire someday, but they’ll all be surprised when it happens. Strong-and-silent types always snap.

When they’re in the bunker, cool and dry, he leaves Frank in a heap near the stair, but he’s got the sense to shut the steel door and double-lock it closed. The fucker just rolls up into a ball and shivers but he’ll burn off the addiction real quick with nothing to crutch himself with.

Dr. D’s got half-a-dozen monitors going, two broadcasting and the others receiving. Blitzkrieg and the Lovebirds are underground in the City but Eagleface and the Joker are gonna meet up with them and they’re quiet back-and-forthing on a careful little frequency but no one’s listening to them (they’re smart as anything and good with the blank-face wearing white) they are all listening to Cherri, Cherri’s heavy breathing and his quietdirty commentary.

“Favorite way to kill? Rip out their assholes, watch their guts melt out like icecream – don’t have the luxury to do that most often, most often gotta stick with a ray gun to the forehead and let them bite the ground, stomp on the skulls maybe—“ The sound of tires screeching. “Wanna clear out this zone like a dog, eat their bones. We’re gonna win, you know, there’s gotta be someone out there, past the deserts, you remember before the fires when forever was a direction. Keep tearing at the walls fuckers, keep making noise, I’m out for now. I’ll keep in touch.”

His frequency squeals and cuts to silent before Dr. D can reply.

He swivels in his chair, shades reflecting their faces distorted. “He wants to go down fighting, he will,” he says.

Poison settles down on a stool, watching the monitors blink and fizzle with static. “They’ll turn him if they can.”

“Think Cherri Cola’d go down uninjured?”

“No, but I think the Dracs are dangerous, and what if he runs into a Scarecrow? Fuckers are wicked.”

Kobra sinks into himself. He thinks of one-two snapping heads back, scalps knocking against spines. And he thinks of the spooks that move like spirits and get you on your knees before you know you’re moving. Cherri’s out there spilling blood and he envies that a little.

Show Pony dangles himself over Dr. D, fingers drumming against his lover’s chest. “They brought us a blank,” he says. D tilts the screen of Pony’s helmet back.

“At least we’ll have someone to replace Cherri,” Kobra says, and he knows it’s cold but they can never forget numbers, numbers, numbers, it’s all in the lasting long enough to find a way out because he knows, knows with more conviction than anyone else knows, that they can win. They just have to not give up. And fuck it if that’s not harder than it sounds.

Jet Star is glaring at him, he knows it. But the man just edges up towards him and says “We here the Dracs are close, you want Mikey and me to scope for a bit?” and Dr. D just nods and Kobra could kill because he’s not Mikey, not here.

 _I’ll turn it into seduction  
I’ll turn it into some facts_

Frank woke up to his sockets falling apart. His eyes were probably melting and someone made his armbones want to jump out and he could feel tears streaming down his face and just like every time he missed his meds, each convulsion of sobs sent a wave of nausea up his chest. Nothing to throw up, though, not since the Dracs kettled them in to—

He’s never getting meds again, probably, he’s going to die without feeling sweetnumb again—

“Hey motorbaby you alright?” someone asked. The room was dark, too dark, lit up by a handful of screens that showed static the color of clouds. The speaker was backlit just enough he could see the slop of shoulders, long hair – longer than regulation standard. “You alright?”

“Cold,” he whispered, and oh the way desperation leaked into his voice when he was like this. Maybe if he weren’t so hungry – so cold – so sad, how he hated it…

The other man scooted forwards, folding Frank up in his arms. His skin was warmer than anything Frank had ever known. “Hold up, you got something stolen and you’re just getting it back. It’s gonna hurt to remember, baby, gonna hurt like God’s revolver in your eyes, but baby it’s worth it.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Show Pony, that’s me, here.”

“That’s- that’s not a name.”

He ran his fingers through Frank’s hair. “Long, haven’t cut it in awhile. Were they gonna make you cut it?”

He nodded, forehead brushing up against Pony’s pulse. “Next week. Next week I was due to get it all off.”

“You never have to cut your hair out here, motorbaby. You can grow your hair straight to the sand and paint it any color you want. You seen Gee’s hair, red as blood? You want color, you can get it. You get color here and you get sadness and sand and anything you want. They can’t take that from you.”

“Hungry,” he whispered. “Can I have s-something to eat?”

“’course, hold up. Gee?”

“Yeah?”

“You get me some kibble? This boy’s stomach is gonna eat itself at this rate.”

There was the sound of metal tearing into metal, like the machines at the factory (sparks and fire.) Gee stumbled towards them, head lit up like coals by the screen-light. “It’s all we’ve got, I’m afraid,” he murmured, sitting next to Show Pony. “But we got lots of it.”

It didn’t taste worse than Frank remembered so much as more aggressively bland but he ate it anyways, desperate to plug the empty part of him closed. “Why…who are you?”

“Gerard,” he said.

“They call you Party Poison.”

For awhile there was just the sound of his fork scraping the tin of the kibble-can. Frank waited.

“Sometimes we can’t be who we are,” he said, and there was the sound of his fingernails scratching across the concrete floor. “Sometimes we need to be heroes, and no one’s really a hero. So we do our best.”

“So that…so that we can grow our hair out.”

Gerard laughed but it was bitter. “Amongst other things,” he said.

“And you talk funny. Especially Mikey.”

“Don’t call him that out here. Here, he’s Kobra, he’s always Kobra. He doesn’t like his name unless we’re resting which is…well, not often. But yeah. Zone-speak.”

He thought of the names for bolts and wires, the way he could speak electricity with his mates and they got each other. That maybe there were words for spark-plugs and current that were simpler but they weren’t right. You talked fuses and someone answers fuses and you felt close. Frank nodded. “I think I understand. Not the words, but the why.”

Gerard’s teeth glinted. “Good man.”

Frank scrapes the last of the gruel into his mouth and swirls his tongue between his teeth and mouth. The flesh is strangely cold; he presses his hand to his chin, hoping to warm himself. Show Pony pulls him a little closer; his head rests on the curve of the man’s shoulder. He’s lithe, like a dancer, with muscles stripped over bone like he was built from a wire frame. “Are you like me?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you live in the City?”

Gerard shuffled around a bit and his jacket squeaks. “Ray – Jet Star – he was. He quit one day ‘cause he wanted to. He’s a crazy motherfucker, went through the War for Texas and everything. Saw the Pigbomb. Me and Mikey were on and off but only ever in the city; we grew up underground and met Ray at a drag race the Dracs busted and he’s the one who ran us to Dr. D. He knew Show Pony here. It’s been awhile. We forget how bad it is unless we’re running Zones and shit. Always a shock how deep they get.”

“Deep?”

“Into people,” Show Pony said. “Into your heads, making you quietlike.”

Gerard huffed something like a laugh. “Heard from Mikey and Ray?”

“Not in the last twenty. They like dusting Dracs, I think it might be good for them. Ran into a pair at the border but nothing else moving.”

Frank had questions, so many questions, but they slipped through his fingers like guts from a torn up body. He was tired. Very tired.

 _Medication, and the way your eyes look into me  
Lubrication, can you turn off all the lights so I can’t see?_

Morning comes like a hangover. They circle back and it’s dawn already, they’re grateful enough for the rest no one grates at them for running a longer scope than necessary. He needed the bloodshed. They’re still on the run so he’s in the rabiesred headspace, too wound up to do anything but flinch at shadows and with they’d catch a tail already. He’s a heartbeat away from overdrive and he needs to break faces, it’s the only thing that cools him. Poison lets him drive more ‘cause every mile they go Dr. D’s a little safer, bolting with the Zonerunners who travel with less style and no Trans Am.

He wants horrorshow, he wants it so bad.

“They have a hostage,” he says, because that’s something your leader ought to know. “We caught their transmissions on the twilight end and they’ve got another runner.”

Poison licks his lips and peers in the rearview mirror. Red of his hair against dirt and asphalt makes it look like candy and dirt. Fuck, he’s hungry. But Poison’s waiting too, for the vamps to show their faces. Wants to blow them sky high, get blood on their gloves, use their shiny batteries like they’re meant to be used. “Any information? Numbers, ages?”

“Three. They had three, killed two of ‘em. Kept the third.” He’s in the bloodlust place in his head. He wants to break them, dreams it in the silences between words. Snap their necks gouge their eyes make christmaslight painsparks with his stolen raygun. They deserve it. For being the machine, in the machine, participating in the machine, interacting, collaborating to steal souls like Frank’s—

Frank’s still asleep, head in Pony’s lap and legs tangled up in Jet Star’s. He hasn’t got a personality yet but they can see it glowing from under is sweetpalesweatskin.

“Hostages are weapons,” he says suddenly. Thinking straight it’s ‘cause he wants to fight, thinking bent it’s ‘cause he believes it.

“Yeah,” Poison says.

Shame. He could use the shouting. Ease him off a bit.

“Shouldn’t be. But yeah.”

“Weapons,” he says. Rolls the word in his mouth like dustwater. Tastes it, remembers – knees elbows fists fingers. Weapons just as much as 6k of bloated diseaseflesh that makes hundreds sick. He wasn’t there but he’d heard about it on the race circuit, picked up rumor and nightmares with the scraps he learned while getting his ass kicked by kind strangers, the sorts with hair brighter than their bruises. Like Poison is now. Strange to think it, freakyodd and electric.

And now they’re headed for it, for the flesh of it, planning to eat their tail where the bones are loud and glittery. Leather like walls and a backbone strong enough to say no to the end of the motherfucking world.

 _You got your rickety bones, I got my rickety hands  
You got your rickety bones, I got my rickety hands_

Frank came to when the car stopped. The wind had picked up and there was a humming in the distance, like the planet’s bones grinding together. Age disease, avoid it with Better Living Industries’—

He ignored the echo of loudspeakers in the factories and waited. The radio was off and no one was talking. He didn’t like it.

“I guess this is it,” Gerard said. Mikey – Kobra? – drummed his fingers on the steering weel. They threw open their doors at the same time and slammed them almost in tandem.

Pony rocked Frank’s head. “We’re waiting here for awhile,” he said. There was a blankness to his voice that seemed alien among the rebels, the rebels with their angry music and their guns.

He wriggled up, braced himself on Jet Star because Jet Star seemed less fragile than Show Pony. His head still hurt and his fingers trembled but it didn’t matter – it seemed to him that though his chest had once been empty, it had blood in it now and sometimes a pleasant sort of yelling feeling. Like he was filled with ghosts. “Why?”

“It’s a good place for an ambush, mainly.” Pony sighed. No mistaking the apprehension there. “We’re at the Pigbomb. Of course you don’t know what it is. No one’s quite sure. ‘cept the folks that made it.” He’d slipped into the language of the City, the imprecise vague words that didn’t catch temperature. Frank didn’t like it. Had they been speaking normally while he slept or had he missed out on the desert language? The difference between Mikey and Kobra?

Jet Star popped his door open and slid out. Pony did, too. Frank waited for a moment and it was just as well he did.

White ars converging towards the sun, like beached whales in the Save Wolfsblood Lake adverts form a couple years back which, come to think of it, didn’t make much sense. Half of the thing was covered with tight brown canvaslike swaths that cast short shadows.

“What the fuck,” he said. From the sand protruded a pair of great straight bones, ahead, he saw teeth.

Mikey giggled. Or maybe Kobra did. “Pigbomb,” he said.

“But why?”

He shrugged. He pulled his sleeves up as he approached it, slipped between its ribs like a well aimed blade. He ran a gloved hand up the columns of it, smile strange.

Show Pony popped open the trunk. “Fascinating as it is, it’s glitz or get glitzed.” He heaved a first crate, then a second, muscles shifting in a way that betrayed their weights. Machines? Frank hoped so. “You gonna look at your batteries or get thirsty right when you’re about to catch something nasty? Move it, motorbabies.”

Jet Star – it was hard to think of him as Ray – made an approving noise. He nudged a box towards Frank. “Scrap,” he said. “If you wanna mess around. Don’t get in the way.” Strange voice.

“Okay,” Frank said. “Okay.”

 _And dressin’ up like a crow  
And turnin’ into some rats_

They’re waiting. They got Frankie and his scrapwork hiding in the car ‘cause no one knows if his aim is true or unfaithful, if he’s the type to get kneebreaking vertigo when the dynamics shift just a bit too strongly.

He’s wound up so tense he might bite, opt to strike with his teeth and fingernails. But he needs straightheadspace not rabiesspace, needs to know the right time to steal the hostageweapon. The thing that needs saving. The world, you know, it’s the world at stake. He digs his teeth into his fingers and waits. Waits.

 _X-O, X-O, X-O, X-O  
X-O, X-O, X-O, X-O!_

With the lasers burning the air and the screamingfeeling blooming through him, all Frank could think was “this is what they’d stolen from me.” There was sand in between his teeth and down his throat and in his blood and finally, finally he was free, free with the air burning his tongue and his cheeks. Outside of the car and free. He shoved the bandana up his face, pressed it close to his mouth and let himself feel fear. It was glorious. He’d never felt it before.

The Dracs held steady at the peak of the dune, bracing their rayguns on their forearms. Kobra and Poison and Jet Star were weaving through the pigbomb carcass, in-out like rats in-out of the dark. Frank threw open the trunk of the Trans Am, fumbled with the machines and the batteries and the wires – fuses caps plugs stickygumtape he would kill for a soldering iron—

The Draculoids were moving, skidding down the hill in uncertain, tentative clots. Show Pony flickered out, drawing fire, and Kobra circled the opposite direction, crouched to the ground. What the fuck were they after? Was this the weapon?

He tucked the bundle of scrap metal and wire into his side and it sparked at his shirt, the same smell as ozone and raygun burn. The first three Dracs who’d edged forwards had crouched into the sand and were firing rapid bursts whenever anyone moved from behind the Pig, leaving Show Pony ducking occasional blasts from them and the wide scatterfire of the half-dozen at the top – but whenever the Dracs focused fire too tight someone would pop up over the bones. A demented game of Whack-A-Mole where the only prize was not getting dusted.

He bolted.

Someone hollered at him – Show Pony danced like it was his feet they were shooting at – once he hit the shadow of the dune he gasped air (it burned his chest like smog or smoked Fame.) Kobra had emerged, and with a frightened child tucked behind him.

“Frankie, what the—what are you doing? You wanna eat dust? I gotta get a clean run or she’ll feel it—“

He leaned forwards and kissed Kobra’s cheek. He tasted like dust. “Trust me.” He heaved his machine higher in his arms.

“Who—Frankie, that’s—who are you, exactly?”

His smile had sand in it. “Who I need to be,” he said. The electricity had made all the hairs on his arm stick up, stand on end. “I got a handle on this. You guys ready to run?”

The girl nodded and her whole body shook.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay.” He knelt and fit the device into the sand. The wind picked up, his face stun enough to make his eyes water. “Are you heading for the Pig?”

Kobra nodded, raygun at his hip. “Yeah, leave Grace there and come back out, hopefully dust the—“ He glanced at the girl. “Dust them. Make a break, cut the road up. Clear this joint fast as feasible.”

“Okay. Okay, we’ll run when I say go.” He stood, stared at the flatline horizon. “When I stop…keep running.

“Go.”

Velocity. Velocity was the only thing he could think of, with sand flying and rays at his back – they were drawing fire and he could see, all but see Show Pony and Party Poison and Jet Star firing. Out in the open, praying with their trigger fingers—

Frank stopped. He turned – smelled burning flesh more than he felt it. He hit the button and prayed with his sweat stained skin. When the explosion came and the dune moved like the earth itself was shrugging their struggles off, he felt it. Felt it in the shrapnel, in Poison half-carrying him, putting him up with plasters while Show Pony and Kobra raided the Drac’s ride. Felt it in the changed landscape. Felt it.

And with the radio on and Grace in his lap, Mikey cradling both of them in the backseat, Gerard laughed, suddenly and with volume enough to make him flinch. “Mikey, you gonna save the City one person at a time?”

“Sounds good to me.”

“And fuck, Frankie – where’d you learn to blow—“ (the cursory glance at the girl) “—stuff up?”

“The factories.”

“That’s what the factories make? Blast, how to build explosives? Explains a few things…”

He nodded and Mikey caught his jaw. Right, wasn’t supposed to be moving. Pony giggled and turned to stare out the window, watch them eat the road up to Dr. D’s door.

And a thought seized Frank. “I want a name,” he said. “I don’t want to leave. I want to blow things up and wear bright colors and speak your language. This one tastes like battery acid.”

Gerard tried to say something but Mikey stopped him with a hand help up for silence. “Grace,” he said. “what’d you tell me earlier, what Frankie looks like?”

She stared at him, silent and so earnestly scandalized that Frank couldn’t help but giggle.

“It’s okay. I think he’ll find it funny like I did.”

“A ghoul,” she said. God, her voice was perfect.

“Grace, what do you think Frank’s plan sounds like? Staying with us?”

“Sounds fun.”

“Fun Ghoul. Think it works?”

Frank nodded.

The radio burst to life, static multiplying and resolving into a familiar, soothing voice. “Ladies and gents, girls and boys, this one’s out to the killjoys – least that’s what the Dracs are callin’ them right about now. Lemme here you out there, babies, and Cherri? Wherever you are, light something up for me. One, two—“


End file.
